"Well," said the barrister coolly, "from what you told me of your father when we met six months ago, I rather think he was a bad lot."
"Unfortunately, yes," said Hench hastily. "But he is dead, so let us say as little about him as possible. Anyhow, he contrived so mortally to offend my grandfather with his doings that he was cut out of the will."
"What did he do particularly shady?"
"I can't tell you," said Hench, with a shrug. "From what Gilberry said I gathered that it wasn't one shady deed, but the culmination of many that induced Mynydd Evans to give the estate to my Uncle Madoc. He was the good boy of the family, and Mynydd Evans knew that his hard-earned fortune would not be dissipated in his hands. My father was allowed five or six hundred a year, and told to keep away from England. He did so and afterwards married abroad--an English governess, my mother. She died in due time and I was sent to England to board with strangers. Then I went to a private school, afterwards to Winchester, where we met, Jim."
"Yes, I know all that. Afterwards your father sent for you and ultimately died in Paris. You told me about your life since, when you came back six months ago. But why didn't your father relate your family history to you? Why did he keep you in the dark?"
"Really, Jim, I can't say, unless it was that he felt ashamed of his doings. He would have had to tell me that he was not straight, to account for his being cut out of the will, you know. Anyhow, he saw Gilberry & Gilberry and left with them those papers, which include my birth certificate and my baptismal one--things which are necessary to prove my identity, you know. Gilberry & Gilberry were my father's lawyers and the lawyers of my uncle and grandfather. They saw that my school fees were paid and kept an eye on me while my father was in exile. So I had no difficulty in proving who I was. In fact old Gilberry knew me from my likeness to my father the moment I entered the office. It's all right so far."
"But if the money was left to your uncle, how do you inherit?"
"Well, it seems that Mynydd Evans always had some qualms about cutting off the direct line, and, I suppose, hoped that the third generation would be better than the second, as represented by my father. Anyhow, he made a will excluding my father, save for the five or six hundred a year allowance, and left the whole eleven thousand pounds per annum he was worth to Uncle Madoc."
"You said it was ten thousand."
"Yes. But of the extra thousand, five hundred went to my father during his life and the remaining five hundred--or it might be four with six to my father, as I'm not quite clear about the exact amounts--to Gwen Evans, my first cousin, Uncle Madoc's daughter."